Is it an astigmatism or
The blur of a questioning heart
When things are disordered, the very edge
Clutching bitten sides as hollow city dwellers
Imagine faces looking downward into fast moving water, seeing drowned doves
A predilection for extremes
Where daughters cut their ropy hair
And open like heart chakras beneath festive lighting in department stores
Accents donating starry landscape above
Informing choices as snowbound relatives learning to talk over cold soup
Girls in A-line skirts, boys hiding erections behind glossy schoolbooks
And the heat of asfalt, curling like collars made of beaver
High gloves, no verbs, learning how to dye mouths like hair
Standing on unstable chairs, wobbling with frail grace
Where is moral nerve? Where negotiation?
Responsibility for one’s life, defines self respect into a set of bronze rings hung from pinched hips
Whatsoever the plan, pinned to walls to hide the cracks
Tension strung like artificial silk, Protection sitting among lotus words
Flattering our need only leaves a sick emptiness
As when your mother left and the heavy latch
Never fell back
Locking you in
Toys and books and closed looks
Guests who leave their fingers uncurled, will be claimed
As shadows whisk the corners of sobriety, in sating stain
When all is said and done, back to earth we come
Folding our weary necks against soft shove
If you take anything, take the memory of
That first summer before the shimmer rubbed off
And everyone was golden beneath August, like hot dancers
Turning their pliant necks to the orchestra’s
Swelling crescendo